Latest news with #MaryKellerman
Daily Mail
13 hours ago
- Health
- Daily Mail
Wide-eyed, foaming at the mouth - the city gripped by panic as healthy residents dropped dead one by one... because they'd all taken the same everyday pill: Special report by TOM LEONARD
The first to die was a 12-year-old schoolgirl named Mary Kellerman, who'd woken up complaining to her parents of having a cold. Hours after her death on the morning of September 29, 1982, in another part of Chicago, postal worker Adam Janus suffered an apparent heart attack despite being a healthy 27-year-old.
Forbes
28-05-2025
- Business
- Forbes
Was James Lewis The Tylenol Killer? The Chilling True Story Behind Netflix's Docuseries
Cold Case: The Tylenol Murders Four decades after the Tylenol murders caused mass panic in Chicago and across the country, Netflix's new docuseries Cold Case: The Tylenol Murders is revisiting the unsolved case. What happened in one of the largest criminal investigations in U.S. history, and why has justice never been served? In 1982, seven people in the Chicago area died under the same mysterious circumstances: they had all taken Extra-Strength Tylenol. After testing, each of the capsules was found to be laced with potassium cyanide at toxic levels high enough to provide 'thousands of fatal doses,' Time Magazine reported. News of the poisoned capsules sparked fear among the six million residents of the Chicago area. Health officials quickly advised the public to stop using the over-the-counter medication, and authorities went door-to-door warning residents of the potential danger. From directors Yotam Guendelman and Ari Pines, Cold Case: The Tylenol Murders dives into the 'shocking theories and evidence, looks at new testimonies, and even gets inside the mind of a key suspect,' according to Netflix's Tudum. Read on for a deeper dive into the Tylenol Murders, including who the victims were, the main person of interest James Lewis, and what happened to Johnson & Johnson during the investigation. Cold Case: The Tylenol Murders The first victim was 12-year-old Mary Kellerman, whose parents gave her Tylenol after she complained of a cold. She died just hours later. Postal worker Adam Janus died later that morning after taking the pills for chest pain. While mourning his death, Adam's brother, Stanley, and Stanley's wife, Theresa, who were both suffering from headaches, also took Tylenol and died later that day. Another victim was 27-year-old Mary Reiner, who had just returned home after giving birth to her first child. Paula Prince, a 35-year-old United Airlines flight attendant, was also found dead in her apartment with an open Tylenol bottle nearby. Paramedics said there was so much cyanide on her lips that anyone who tried to resuscitate her might have been poisoned as well. The seventh victim was 31-year-old Mary McFarland of Elmhurst, who collapsed at work after taking Tylenol for a headache. A pathologist's test found cyanide in her blood, the New York Times reported at the time. The Netflix documentary notes that there could be more victims, as cyanide tests are rarely included in a standard autopsy toxicology screen unless there is a specific reason to suspect poisoning. For example, if an elderly person had ingested cyanide, the cause of death might have been harder to detect. American businessman and CEO of Johnson and Johnson, James Burke, New Brunswick, New Jersey, 1981. ... More (Photo by Brownie Harris/Corbis via Getty Images) In the early days of the investigation, Johnson & Johnson executives feared they might bear some responsibility for the murders, according to the Netflix docuseries. At the time, Tylenol was the pharmaceutical company's most profitable product. Illinois Attorney General Tyrone Fahner, who was interviewed in the series, recalled telling Johnson & Johnson to stop selling Tylenol – prompting what would become the largest product recall in history. While testing the contents of the Tylenol bottles, investigators noticed that some capsules had brown rings forming at the ends, evidence of cyanide corrosion. It became clear that the capsules had been pulled apart, emptied of their medicine, and refilled with cyanide. It was also revealed that the contaminated pills came from two different manufacturing plants, one in suburban Philadelphia and the other in Texas. After both facilities showed no evidence of cyanide tampering, investigators began to suspect that someone had tampered with the capsules after they reached store shelves. The tainted Tylenol bottles had been sold at various drugstores across the Chicago area. Cold Case: The Tylenol Murders Police had no major investigative leads, no connections between the victims, no witnesses, and no clear motive until October 6, 1982. Seven days after the murders, Johnson & Johnson received an extortion letter threatening that more people would be poisoned if certain demands were not met. The letter demanded that $1 million be deposited into an account at Chicago's Continental Bank or a second wave of killings would follow. Investigators believed the person who wrote the letter was likely involved, as he demonstrated specific knowledge about poison and how it works. The bank account was linked to a travel agency called Lakeside Travel, owned by Fred Miller McCahey, a wealthy businessman. McCahey told authorities he had recently gotten into a dispute with a volatile man named Robert Richardson, the husband of one of his employees, Nancy Richardson. Employees at the travel agency noted that the handwriting on the extortion letter resembled Robert's. Handwriting experts later confirmed that it was identical. After Robert and Nancy fled, authorities attempted to track him down using a photo published alongside an article he had written for the Chicago Tribune. Investigators also noted that he resembled the man seen in surveillance footage from the store where Mary McFarland had purchased the lethal Tylenol, per Cold Case. James Lewis in "Cold Case: The Tylenol Murders." David Barton, a former sergeant with the Kansas City, Missouri Police Department, recalled seeing a photo of Richardson on the news and immediately sensing something was off. 'I looked at the picture, and I immediately recognized him, jumped up off the couch and said, 'Goddam it, that's not Robert Richardson,'' Barton told Netflix. 'That's not Robert Richardson… that's James Lewis.' Lewis, a tax consultant, became the police's prime suspect in the Tylenol murders. He also had a criminal history. In 1978, Lewis was charged with murder in Kansas City after police discovered the dismembered remains of one of his former clients, Raymond West, in bags in his attic. Authorities also found a forged check that Lewis tried to cash from West's account. However, charges were dropped after a judge ruled that the search of Lewis' home was illegal, according to In 2004, he was charged with rape and kidnapping, but the case was dropped. Lewis was interviewed for Netflix's docuseries, where he denied any involvement in the crimes. "They make it look like I'm the world's most horrible, dangerous person ever... and I wouldn't hurt anybody," Lewis said. Lewis was convicted of extortion for the letter and spent more than 12 years in federal prison. 'I did not consider it an extortion letter because I did not actually have access to making any money from that letter,' he told Netflix. Although officials found drafts of extortion letters in James Lewis's home, along with a book about poisonings, tying him directly to the Tylenol murders was difficult. He was never charged with the killings because authorities could not confirm that he was in the Chicago area during the murders. He had reportedly taken an Amtrak train to New York City and was staying in a hotel there, but police couldn't prove that he returned to Chicago. The FBI reopened the investigation in early 2009 and continued to focus on Lewis. They searched his office in Cambridge, Massachusetts, as well as a nearby storage unit he had rented. According to CBS News, in September 2022, members of the task force returned to Boston to re-interview him. Lewis passed away in 2023. IRVINE, CALIFORNIA - OCTOBER 17: The Johnson & Johnson logo is displayed at company offices on ... More October 17, 2023 in Irvine, California. Johnson & Johnson beat Wall Street's quarterly revenue and earnings estimates as sales in its pharmaceutical and medical devices businesses grew. (Photo by) Johnson & Johnson has denied that there was any chance their pills could have been tampered with at their factories, claiming that no cyanide was used in their facilities. However, as the documentary reveals, that turned out to be false. 'Cyanide is present and is used in crucial tests of the Tylenol,' former New York Times pharmaceutical reporter Gardiner Harris said in the series. He also pointed out that the company did most of the investigating themselves, even though they seemed to have 'every season to hide the extent of the contamination problems.' The documentary reveals that potassium cyanide was used it a quality control tests of Tylenol and was found in the vicinity of where the pills were assembled. In 1988, a court ruled that Johnson & Johnson wasn't liable for Diane Elsroth's death. The families of the Chicago victims also sued the company in 1983, claiming that the Johnson & Johnson knew that their bottles ould be tampered with. Johnson & Johnson settled the suit in 1991 and agreed to pay an undisclosed sum without admitting liability. "Though there is no way we could have anticipated a criminal tampering with our product or prevented it, we wanted to do something for the families and finally get this tragic event behind us," Robert Kniffin, a spokesman for Johnson & Johnson, said at the time. Bruce Pfaff, a lawyer for the plaintiffs, called the agreement 'a very favorable settlement for my clients.' Several of the families were seeking between $10 million and $15 million for wrongful death, pain and suffering, and funeral expenses, according to The New York Times. A worker checks the newly implemented safety seals on Tylenol bottles shortly after the company's ... More re-release of Tylenol capsules in 1982. A few months earlier, a Chicago man poisoned Tylenol with cyanide, killing several people. | Location: Fort Washington, Pennsylvania, USA. (Photo by �� Leif Skoogfors/CORBIS/Corbis via Getty Images) Johnson & Johnson was ultimately able to successfully re-launch Tylenol after the scare. The company overhauled its manufacturing process and introduced three separate safety seals to Tylenol packaging. First was an outer box with glued flaps. Second, a tight plastic neck seal covering the cap and neck of the bottle. And finally, a strong inner foil seal placed over the mouth of the bottle. Four years after the original murders, on February 8, 1986, Diane Elsroth of Yonkers, New York, died after taking Extra-Strength Tylenol capsules that were found to contain cyanide, even though the bottle had a triple safety seal. Johnson & Johnson claimed at the time that someone had penetrated all the seals, resecured them, and returned the bottles to the shelf. The Netflix documentary reported that two additional triple-sealed bottles of Tylenol were also found to contain the poison. Ultimately, the Westchester District Attorney was able to determine where the pills had been tampered with. In the aftermath of the Tylenol poisonings, other pharmaceutical and food companies began implementing tamper-proof seals and safety indicators during the manufacturing process. These changes significantly reduced the number of copycat incidents. 'Before 1982, nobody thought twice about opening a bottle of painkillers,' Guendelman and Pines told Tudum. 'Today, every tamper-proof seal is a reminder of that dark moment — when cyanide-laced capsules transformed an everyday medicine into a murder weapon, permanently reshaping consumer industries." Watch the official trailer for Cold Case: The Tylenol Murders below.
Yahoo
13-04-2025
- Health
- Yahoo
How Johnson & Johnson has somehow survived scandal after scandal
On Sept. 29, 1982, Mary Kellerman woke up feeling sick. The 12-year-old girl from Elk Grove Village, a suburb of Chicago, asked her parents to stay home from school, and they gave her one extra-strength Tylenol capsule. She was dead a few hours later. The doctors assumed she'd died from a congenital heart condition or perhaps an aneurysm. But then six more people across the Chicagoland area, ranging in age from 19 to 35, also died the same day from mysterious circumstances. Before long, firefighters realized that all the deaths had one thing in common: Tylenol. After the bottles were scrutinized by a medical examiner, it was discovered they'd been laced with cyanide. The deaths became 'one of the most extensively covered news events since the assassination of President John F. Kennedy almost twenty years earlier,' writes Gardiner Harris in his new book, 'No More Tears: The Dark Secrets of Johnson & Johnson' (Random House), out now. 'All three national networks made the poisonings the center of their broadcasts for weeks. Almost every newspaper in the country covered it through the fall, with more than one hundred thousand individual stories.' It was a scary time for consumers nationwide. But it was especially daunting for executives at Johnson & Johnson, one of the country's most beloved brands. 'Few American corporations have ever faced such a disaster,' writes Harris. Tylenol wasn't just a top seller for Johnson & Johnson; it was the company's most important and iconic product. 'Sales in 1982 were expected to approach $500 million and account for nearly 20% of its profits,' writes Harris. 'Now every major media organization on the planet was linking Tylenol with death. The company had to rescue the franchise, but how?' It didn't help that Chicago's own mayor, Jane Byrne, held a news conference imploring city residents to bring their Tylenol to the nearest police station. 'Don't take Tylenol,' she said, 'not even in tablet or liquid form.' It was, to say the least, the worst public relations moment imaginable. Johnson & Johnson was at a crossroads. Depending on how executives responded, it could either scare their loyal customers away forever or prove they were a company and a brand to be trusted. In the end, they managed to pull off the latter. Their response 'has long been seen as the most ethical, honest, and effective crisis reaction in American corporate history,' writes Harris. Johnson & Johnson has faced a lot of scandals over the years that could have (and in many cases, should have) destroyed them. From lawsuits claiming their antipsychotic drug Risperdal didn't warn about side effects like male breast growth, to a 2020 nationwide recall of their baby powder after evidence surfaced that it was contaminated with cancer-causing asbestos, to FDA restrictions of their COVID vaccine due to life-threatening blood clot risks. But it was the Tylenol scandal that would forever define the company. Before the poisonings, 'few people knew that Tylenol was made by Johnson & Johnson,' writes Harris. But after their response, polls found 'near universal recognition.' Last January, Fortune magazine ranked Johnson & Johnson as one of the most admired corporations in the world for the 23rd consecutive year. 'If there is a more American — quintessentially American — company than Johnson & Johnson, I do not know what it is,' Tyler Mathisen, a longtime CNBC anchor, told a network healthcare conference in May 2019. How did Johnson & Johnson not just survive but thrive after the Tylenol panic of 1982? First and foremost, they acted fast. J&J executives agreed to pull every Tylenol capsule on every store shelf—about 31 million bottles. 'It was the largest drug recall in history and cost J&J $100 million to manage,' writes Harris. They also quickly added protective seals to all new Tylenol products, with a plastic ring around the necks of pill bottles and a foil placed over the bottle's mouth. 'These measures were soon adopted by every over-the-counter drug manufacturer,' writes Harris. But while it appeared that the company was decisive and expeditious, they were actually well-prepared for this moment. 'In the previous three years, the company had received 300 complaints about contaminations,' writes Harris. Johnson & Johnson was already working on tamper-resistant packaging, so when the Tylenol poisonings happened. They also had something else that helped the company protect its public image: the most corrupt FDA commissioner in history. Dr. Arthur Hayes Jr., who served as the FDA commissioner between 1981 and 1983, 'believed drug regulation should be a collaborative process,' writes Harris. His idea of collaboration involved bribes from drug companies. The Tylenol poisonings allowed him an opportunity to prove his loyalty to the medical drug behemoth. Hayes 'lost little time in publicly exonerating Johnson & Johnson,' writes Harris. 'FDA officials even took pains to tell reporters that the two lots linked to the poisonings were not being termed 'recalls,' which would imply a manufacturing defect.' There's no conclusive proof that J&J ever paid Hayes a dime during his time as FDA commissioner, 'but he spent much of the rest of his life (after retiring as commissioner) working for a public relations firm owned by a former top J&J executive,' writes Harris. When Johnson & Johnson relaunched Tylenol just a few months later, on Thanksgiving 1982, with tamper-resistant packaging, it was briefly the only over-the-counter medicine with the extra layer of safety, 'providing the product with a halo it never surrendered,' writes Harris. It wouldn't be the last time Tylenol became a headache (no pun intended) for the company. In 1994, Antonio Benedi, a former scheduler for President George H.W. Bush, sued Johnson & Johnson, claiming that he suffered liver failure after using Tylenol Extra Strength to treat the flu. The jury awarded him nearly $9 million in damages, and court documents found that 'Johnson & Johnson had known for years that moderate drinkers — a description that applies to most Americans — could suffer catastrophic liver damage from ordinary doses of Tylenol,' writes Harris. The trouble had started decades earlier, when J&J upped the amount of acetaminophen from 325 to 500 milligrams per pill to combat consumer belief that Tylenol, while safe, was less effective than other brands. The FDA was reluctant to add a liver warning on bottles, deeming it unnecessary. 'The agency said it didn't want people who were contemplating suicide to know the damage the drug could do,' Harris writes. The brand's avowed safety — its most iconic advertisement claimed it was the pain reliever 'hospitals use most' — was, ironically, what made it so deadly. A University of Pennsylvania study found that many patients who developed liver damage from Tylenol never bothered to read the recommended dosage as 'they thought the drug was so safe,' Harris writes. Despite the legal wrist slap, Johnson & Johnson emerged almost unscathed and today is still one of the largest and most trusted healthcare companies in the world. The 1982 Tylenol poisoning has become a case study for students at Harvard Business School, which 'used to teach thousands of executives-in-training that if they do the right thing even at considerable expense, customers will reward them,' Harris writes. Even within the J&J inner ranks, a belief has solidified that 'the company was a uniquely beneficial force for good in the world.' They had a level of trust from consumers that was 'all but impossible to degrade,' Harris writes. It was, he adds, 'Corporate gaslighting on an epic scale.'
